Gen Z

see millennial

SEE TWO

see renta-todd gen z 320

bak capt 12 23 gen z young ppl bak

see student suppress/ voter suppression

this is about sane left, see RW kirk and campus free sp bs, also academia

ntbcw gen zero

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SEE sjw snowflakes: {{ see other node

imported: see wedge culture war

rubber inverse of hypocrisy/ fake outrage? projection of bad faith on left /gen z // lowest motive

see vice signaling

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unpack virtue signal: any word or deed in support of left ideas whether sincerely held or not? if sincere naive dumb or duped by pinko commie prof or lamestream media or woke____; mere tribe solidarity or worse/more probable cave to peer pressure (of what is fashionable vs what is rt principled? / SJW

aha often accuse young ppl gen z of being naive or worse, too emotional thus // fem vs manly men who see world realistically // alarmist

useful b/c young ppl Greta direct action, punch above wt

feminization?

see man male

see FIRE greg coddle

see strict father

see provocateur eg milo; coulter does standup?!

beck and rush used to retreat when busted as just entertainer/clown

alt rt trolls get to spew hate then say, just kidding, just pwning/ owning the libs, can't believe you fell for it?

hypocrisy/ 2x st’d/ inversion:

ok to trigger the snowflakes, yet rt is under attack, free speech being crushed, identity politics, victimnarrative (mirror)

virtue signaling, social justice warrior

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"fuck your feelings" (unless it's white xian ID under attack/tyrany

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safe spaces don't actually exist?

see FIRE coddling guy

-=-=

Fox host Charles Payne offers young Americans advice for affording the American dream: Skip parties, don't have a pet, take a staycation instead of a vacation

MMA 10 26

-=-=

AN 9 26

There’s been plenty of attention on Gen Z voters since they swung right in 2024, but apparently assumptions were a little too premature, says Gen Z culture analyst Rachel Janfaza. They’re not the “red-pilled MAGA hardliners” they were sold to be.

“In 2020, as Gen Z voters came of age, the culture war was at its peak and it felt like every candidate, race and issue was a reflection of our values,” wrote Janfaza. “But today, young voters’ concerns are more material and far less ideological. There’s a common set of issues unifying Gen Zers across the political spectrum: the cost of living, inflation, AI, war, corruption.”

To get a sense of how young voters — including 8.5 million potential first-time voters — are feeling about the 2026 midterm elections, Janfaza and company spoke to them in a series of focus groups. And what interviews with 70 young people aged 17 to 33 in 28 states and Washington D.C. revealed was that they were not MAGA’s future as earlier reported.

“They care a lot less about being woke and a lot more about being able to get a job and pay their rent — let alone buy a home. And they’re looking for candidates who get that,” said Janfaza. “Gen Z voters really just want their politicians to be good, honest people, who work hard for their community and country. That means tackling the cost of living, working on government programs like SNAP and WIC, embracing social policies when it comes to healthcare, jobs, education, and regulating AI. It’s not that complicated. And it’s party agnostic.”

The generation doesn’t identify easily with the two political parties, but they certainly don’t identify with MAGA. In fact, according to interviews, when young voters support socialist candidates or say they favor socialism writ large, it’s really because they feel the status quo isn’t working.

“Life feels totally unaffordable, but young people believe that it doesn’t have to be this way. They want the government to provide Americans with a social safety net and endorse policies like universal or at least affordable health care, affordable housing, a higher minimum wage, affordable education, paid family leave, taxes on corporations, etc.,” Janfaza said.

And unlike other movements rotted in the past or worse, Gen Z appears to have “a hunger for forward looking policies.”

Call it “Hopemaxxing,” said Janfaza, but it means Gen Z wants to hear what a candidate’s plan is to fix the status quo, rather than preserve it. And don’t bother coming at them with the intent to “just blame the other side,” they say. This generation is “looking for candidates to inspire.”

Want to know how New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani cut inroads with the generation? He talked “pothole politics,” complete with on-the-ground repair policies for infrastructure and other endeavors.

And while MAGA isn’t about to benefit from this particular state of mind, Janfaza said Democrats shouldn’t rest easy on their laurels either. This is a results-minded generation.

“How people vote in the midterms will be all about the cost of living, but if young people don’t believe that any of the candidates can make a difference, they may not even show up,” she said.

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BECOMING REGULAR RANT? STEVE DOOCY

12 23

ggl alert

decent artl on tree migration portland, forest service not jackboots? , it’s AP but paired w/ f&f morano BS

:{Marc Morano warns of climate change's 'true assault' on the freedom of movement

ClimateDepot.com publisher Marc Morano joins 'Fox & Friends Weekend' to discuss the impact of the climate agenda on air travel and traffic as protestors cause disruptions.

:{4 min; protest airport few? generation tantrum vs the last gen ominous;

germany big dude red tshirt hauls from crosswalk then cops ;

fr ban 2 6 hr flights wacky nutty govt listen insane agEnda in us Air traffic controllers tightened up, hate to go there ; bloomberg news compliance cost baked into climate regs same with car creATE CAR SHORTAGE FORCE TO MASS TRANSIT}:

dude rt: INHERENTLY ANTI DEM; BLUE SUIT LEFT BLOCK SPORTING EVENT AVG JOE TRYING TO GO TO WORK HOLLYWOOD CELEB FuND DIRECTORS SOMEONE LISTENING GETTING TRACKING RATIONING DUMB PR BUT WORKS; HANDS IN ASDPHALT ? chick HOLLYWOOD AGENDA NOT FAIR TO AVG CITIZENS

Pacific Northwest implements new strategy to help trees impacted by climate

---

an 5 23

no lnx

former Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker (R), recently suggested Republicans are losing significant elections because of Generation Z voters and "years of radical indoctrination," Media Matters for America reports.

During a Thursday, April 6, interview with Fox News, host Trace Gallagher asked the former governor, "The Wall Street Journal says the following here, 'the left wins big in the midwest elections.' Quoting again, 'Progressives had a banner day in the midwest Tuesday with victories for Chicago mayor and a swing seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The results will energize the left within the Democratic party and the badger state results are a five-alarm warning to Republicans about 2024.' Is it? We said this before in the intro. Is this a five-alarm fire for the Republicans?"

Walker replied, "To me the larger issue here, we've seen it particularly in Wisconsin but across the country, is younger voters. In Wisconsin, last fall, we saw about a 40-point margin that younger voters gave to the Democrats running for senate and governor. We saw similar margins in Pennsylvania."

READ MORE: 'Don't underestimate the power of a pissed off generation': Young voters overwhelmingly turned out for Dems

Reiterating his point, the GOPer tweeted a clip from the interview, writing, "Younger voters are the issue. It comes from years of radical indoctrination - on campus, in school, with social media, & throughout culture. We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again."

During the interview, he insisted, "Part of the reason why you have John Fetterman in the U.S. Senate in Arizona and Georgia and elsewhere. And just this week in Wisconsin, we don't yet know the numbers by age, but we do know thatDane County, which is where the University of Wisconsin's flagship campus is at, about 50,000 students are enrolled there, Dane County cast more ballots in the race for the Supreme Court than the largest county in the state, Milwaukee County. And in Dane County, 82% of those votes went for the radical. So unless we turn young people around -- and it's not as simple as one campaign ad or some sort of a coalition. This is years of liberal indoctrination coming home to roost. And we've got to turn it around if we're gonna win again."

The Hill reports, "Generation Z voters overwhelmingly align with Democrats on issues like gun control, abortion, climate change, and LGBTQ issues, posing a challenge for the GOP as it looks to appeal to the younger demographic," adding, "Seventy-seven percent of Generation Z voters said they voted for a Democratic candidate for Congress, compared to only 21 percent who said they voted for a Republican, according to a Pew Research study released late last year."

Walker added, "I can't blame a lot on this generation. Because all they've heard are radical ideas and climate change and defunding the police,on abortion, and all these sorts of other issues. And so they have never heard the opposing viewpoint. And so if that's all they hear in college and high school and social media and culture, you can see why they've gone so lock step in that regard. We've got to turn that around."

READ MORE: 'Nicer rhetoric': Young GOPers feel a 'pang of embarrassment' when their elders use the word 'woke'

The former governor's comments backfired significantly on social media.

@GoodPoliticGuy: "Republicans are incapable of understanding the reality of how their economic and political agenda has f**ked my generation. It's not indoctrination, it's capitalism and corruption."

@AOC: "If your assessment is that it's 'radical indoctrination' to not want some creepy legislator to control one's uterus, your problems are way bigger than voting. You will never win the argument that you should have more power over a woman's body than she does. That's a promise."

Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta: "'Young voters are the issue.' This is giving real Scooby-Doo villain energy. We would have gotten away with it without those meddling kids."

Heather Cox Richardson: "Did it ever occur to you that your people are the ones who have been indoctrinated with a false and radical worldview by right-wing media, while younger Americans are seeing the world for what it really is?"

READ MORE: 'Gen Z don’t play': AOC says Tennessee’s 'fascism' is firing up young people

Neil Hopkins: "Our policies suck and are super unpopular to educated young people - so we should get rid of education and stop young people from voting."

Kelly AuCoin: "Maybe they're sick of people like you poisoning the Earth they'll have to live on long after you’re gone. Maybe they'd rather not be shot in school. Maybe they reject your religious indoctrination. Maybe they want control over their own bodies. Maybe it’s you, Scott."

Mitch Dyer: "Young people participating in democracy is a problem for you huh"

Bradley P. Moss: "It can't be that they hate your policies. No, it has to be indoctrination."

Olivia Julianna: "Hey @ScottWalker my American Dream is being your worst nightmare. There are MILLIONS of young people exactly like me. I hope that fact haunts your every waking moment."

READ MORE: 'Furious' Gen Z lawmaker delivers blistering remarks to GOP following Nashville school shooting

Watch the video below or at this link.

Media Matters for America's full report is available at this link. The Hill's report is available here.

READ MORE: 'They ruined everything': Jake Tapper tears into boomers during interview with Gen. Z candidate

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Watch: Marjorie Taylor Greene accused of kicking woman after telling activist to 'move to another country' ›

Herschel Walker tells disenchanted young Americans to 'find somewhere else' and give up citizenship ›

Mississippi’s far-right secretary of state is terrified that Biden will encourage 'woke' college students to vote ›

'We Have So Much More to Do': Youth Climate Activists Declare as Global Elite Close Out Davos Forum

ACTIVISM

1/20

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/al-gore-davos-climate-crisis-interview-941722/

at Davos, the Greta-Donald Dust-Up Was Hardly a Fair Fight

:{:{BY: MARIANNE LAVELLE}:

The teenage activist from Sweden delved into the finer points of carbon neutrality. The president denounced the “prophets of doom” and sputtered, “How old is she?” Read More}:

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punked:

corruption it's also a devil term; djt needed to defend from it, so he i'm not a puppet 'd joe hunter biden --> ukraine (also bizarro mirror on server)

“Do So. Don't vote. Don't be involved in politics. It's like a sign of resistance against – not government, against politics. And voting. And very soon they're making their own YouTube videos. This is the prime minister’s house that's being graffitied! … It was carnage.

“And the reason why this was such a good strategy is because we knew, and we really really knew, that when it came to voting, all the Afro-Caribbean kids wouldn't vote, because they ‘Do So’. But all the Indian kids would do what their parents told them to do, which is go out and vote. And so all the Indians went out and voted, and the difference on the 18-35-year-old turnout is like 40%, and that swung the election by about 6% – which is all we needed!”

Again, Nix was selling his company’s expertise in promoting cynicism and apathy to suppress turnout among the opposition. But this campaign was even more manipulative: enlisting young Afro-Caribbeans in what pretended to be an authentic youth movement, secretly designed to manipulate them into surrendering their votes. This is what ‘compliance’ means in psychological warfare: achieving the desired behavioural effect from a ‘hostile audience’.

Asked for comment on the Do-So campaign, Nix responded in an email earlier today, writing, “The objective of this campaign was to highlight and protest against political corruption.There is nothing unlawful or illegal about assisting with this activity. SCL / CA has never undertaken voter suppression and there is no evidence to the contrary.”

Nix’s closing comments in his summer 2016 pitch were tantalising: “We’ve got an in-house intelligence team, so we can do full intelligence protection… Opposition don’t hack your emails and everything else. And we're pretty good at getting intelligence too… You know what? We do a lot of counter operations.You can spend $10 million on an election.Or we can send one of our guys in to go offer the leader of the opposition a bribe, you know, three weeks before polling. It's a very good way to win an election.”

Beneath the veneer, this seems to have been some of the work Alexander Nix was most proud of. This is how he pitched his company around the world, just as he was finally starting to work for Trump. This is the man who the Mercers and Steve Bannon enlisted to help them reshape the American political mind.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-bunker-with-12-days-to-go

...Several things jump out. Despite Trump’s claim that he doesn’t believe the polls, his San Antonio research team spends $100,000 a week on surveys (apart from polls commissioned out of Trump Tower) and has sophisticated models that run daily simulations of the election. The results mirror those of the more reliable public forecasters—in other words, Trump’s staff knows he’s losing. Badly. “Nate Silver’s results have been similar to ours,” says Parscale, referring to the polling analyst and his predictions at FiveThirtyEight, “except they lag by a week or two because he’s relying on public polls.” The campaign knows who it must reach and is still executing its strategy despite the public turmoil: It’s identified 13.5 million voters in 16 battleground states whom it considers persuadable, although the number of voters shrinks daily as they make up their minds.

Trump’s team also knows where its fate will be decided. It’s built a model, the “Battleground Optimizer Path to Victory,” to weight and rank the states that the data team believes are most critical to amassing the 270 electoral votes Trump needs to win the White House. On Oct. 18 they rank as follows: Florida (“If we don’t win, we’re cooked,” says an official), Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Trump believes he possesses hidden strength that may only materialize at the ballot box. At rallies, he’s begun speculating that the election will be like “Brexit times five,” implying that he’ll upend expectations much as the Brexit vote shocked experts who didn’t believe a majority of Britons would vote to leave the European Union. Trump’s data scientists, including some from the London firm Cambridge Analytica who worked on the “Leave” side of the Brexit initiative, think they’ve identified a small, fluctuating group of people who are reluctant to admit their support for Trump and may be throwing off public polls.

Still, Trump’s reality is plain: He needs a miracle. Back in May, newly anointed, he told Bloomberg Businessweek he would harness “the movement” to challenge Clinton in states Republicans haven’t carried in years: New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Connecticut, California. “I’m going to do phenomenally,” he predicted. Yet neither Trump’s campaign nor the RNC has prioritized registering and mobilizing the 47 million eligible white voters without college degrees who are Trump’s most obvious source of new votes, as FiveThirtyEight analyst David Wasserman noted.

To compensate for this, Trump’s campaign has devised another strategy, which, not surprisingly, is negative. Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida.

On Oct. 24, Trump’s team began placing spots on select African American radio stations. In San Antonio, a young staffer showed off aSouth Park-style animationhe’d created of Clinton delivering the “super predator” line(using audio from her original 1996 sound bite), as cartoon text popped up around her: “Hillary Thinks African Americans are Super Predators.” The animation will be delivered to certain African American voters through Facebook “dark posts”—nonpublic posts whose viewership the campaign controls so that, as Parscale puts it, “only the people we want to see it, see it.” The aim is to depress Clinton’s vote total. “We know because we’ve modeled this,” says the official. “It will dramatically affect her ability to turn these people out.”

The Trump team’s effort to discourage young women by rolling out Clinton accusers and drive down black turnout in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood with targeted messages about the Clinton Foundation’s controversial operations in Haiti is an odd gambit. Campaigns spend millions on data science to understand their own potential supporters—to whom they’re likely already credible messengers—but here Trump is speaking to his opponent’s. Furthermore, there’s no scientific basis for thinking this ploy will convince these voters to stay home. It could just as easily end up motivating them.

Regardless of whether this works or backfires, setting back GOP efforts to attract women and minorities even further, Trump won’t come away from the presidential election empty-handed. Although his operation lags previous campaigns in many areas (its ground game, television ad buys, money raised from large donors), it’s excelled at one thing: building an audience. Powered by Project Alamo and data supplied by the RNC and Cambridge Analytica, his team is spending $70 million a month, much of it to cultivate a universe of millions of fervent Trump supporters, many of them reached through Facebook. By Election Day, the campaign expects to have captured 12 million to 14 million e-mail addresses and contact information (including credit card numbers) for 2.5 million small-dollar donors, who together will have ponied up almost $275 million. “I wouldn’t have come aboard, even for Trump, if I hadn’t known they were building this massive Facebook and data engine,” says Bannon. “Facebook is what propelled Breitbart to a massive audience. We know its power.”

Since Trump paid to build this audience with his own campaign funds, he alone will own it after Nov. 8 and can deploy it to whatever purpose he chooses. He can sell access to other campaigns or use it as the basis for a 2020 presidential run. It could become the audience for a Trump TV network. As Bannon puts it: “Trump is an entrepreneur.”

Whatever Trump decides, this group will influence Republican politics going forward.These voters, whom Cambridge Analytica has categorized as “disenfranchised new Republicans,” are younger, more populist and rural—and also angry, active, and fiercely loyal to Trump. Capturing their loyalty was the campaign’s goal all along. It’s why, even if Trump loses, his team thinks it’s smarter than political professionals. “We knew how valuable this would be from the outset,” says Parscale. “We own the future of the Republican Party.”

...

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extended: $ https://www.risingupwithsonali.com/2019/10/24/doreen-dodgen-magee-discusses-her-book-deviced-balancing-life-and-technology-in-a-digital-world-extended-interview/

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u penn study shows 30 min soc med increases anxiety?!

Social media use increases depression and loneliness | Penn ...

https://penntoday.upenn.edu › news › social-media-use-increases-depressio...

Nov 9, 2018 - For the first time, an experimental study shows a causal link between time spent on these social media and increased depression and loneliness. ... measures including fear of missing out, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. ... stay, it's incumbent on society to figure out how to use them in a way that limits ...

Missing: min ‎| Must include:min

free? video

https://www.risingupwithsonali.com/2019/12/26/deviced-balancing-life-and-technology-in-a-digital-world/

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Search Results

Web results

doreen dodgen-magee psy.d.

https://doreendm.com

booktv

NOVEMBER 23, 2019

Interview with Lauren Duca

Political columnist Lauren Ducatalked about her book, How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics, on the rise in political engagement amongst millennials.

1/2 dozen uprisings hong kong...

DEC 02, 2019

Youth-Led Protests Topple Iraqi PM as Demonstrations Calling for Overhaul of Government Continue

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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-hong-kong-bill-917935/

neglected to include rt here?

TPusa some problems, don jr ucla, online escalation /factionalization --> implode?

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DEBATE?!

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/evangelical-leaders-who-support-trump-are-only-speaking-for-flatlining-white-christians-and-their-worldview-is-dying-religious-scholar/

no lnx

Evangelical leaders who support Trump are only speaking for ‘flatlining’ white Christians — and their worldview is dying: religious scholar

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story November 26, 2019

Addressing recent comments by supporters of Donald Trump who maintain that the three-time divorced, the non-church-going president is the “chosen one,” MSNBC contributor Eddie Glaude stated with some certainty the assertion is “nonsense,” and that Trump’s evangelical enablers are speaking for a dying faction of white rightwing Christianity.

Speaking with host Stephanie Ruhle, Glaude — who chairs the Department of African American Studies at Princeton — said, “This is dangerous in so far as when you try to yolk politics to God talk, you’re trying tosacralize politics. You’re trying to insulate that from criticismbecause you’re taking it out of human doing and you’re saying that God sanctioned what you’re doing. whether or not you’re Donald Trump or Martin Luther King Jr.”

After explaining that he’s a religious scholar, Glaude was asked about recent comments made by evangelist Franklin Graham that “the impeachment fight is a spiritual battle.”

“Yeah, to hear Franklin Graham or Paula White is to, in some ways hear the voices of a particular segment of white Christianity that I think has flatlined,” he explained. “It’s not growing in terms of its demographics. you look at the arguments within Liberty University itself. We see these folks desperately clinging to Donald Trump because I think the writing is on the wall’”

“Even young evangelicals,” host Ruhle suggested.

“We saw those debates at Liberty itself,” Glaude continued. “So part of what we have to kind of wrap our mind around, Stephanie, is this: white Christianity has always been in some ways the adjective overturning the noun. The church right next to the slave auction block. Preachers and ministers leading mobs to destroy communities in Wilmington and Tulsa.”

“There’s a way in which people have reconciled the gospel with evil, to justify their practices with the gospel,” he elaborated. “What we’re seeing from the mouths of folks like Franklin Graham and Paula White and others is the use of the gospel to justify their wanton and craven desire to walk the corridors of power.”

Watch below:

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an 1119

...quotes one Zoomer:

Everybody in Gen Z is affected by the choices of the boomers, that they made and are still making.…Those choices are hurting us and our future. Everyone in my generation can relate to that experience and we’re all really frustrated by it.

While providing a range of takes, what all these stories obscure, with their focus on intergenerational strife, is the relevance of class as a fundamental divide in American culture.In reality, it was not boomers as a group who prevented meaningful action on climate change, nor was it they who increased college tuitions (FAIR.org, 4/5/17). Those decisions were made by a small group of people at the top of society–in corporate boardrooms and in high office. There is much to be said about how the media’s not-hot-but-perennial takes hide such decisions by pitting generations against one another (Extra!, 3–4/97)–with assertions that Social Security recipients are stealing from the young, and that slashing government budgets is a matter of generational equity.

But the current generational conflict narrative mainly serves to obscure the vast differences in wealth and power between those in the same age cohort.While the current generation is far worse off economically than previous ones, the National Council on Ageing notes that over 25 million Americans aged 60+ are economically insecure, with over a third of senior households broke or in debt at the end of the month. Therefore, by emphasizing age and not class, corporate media are effectively playing generations off against each other, allowing the rich to play divide and rule (FAIR.org, 1/5/16).

...

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/students-could-be-a-major-force-in-2020-but-not-if-republicans-can-help-it/

no lnx

Students could be a major force in 2020 — but not if Republicans can help it

Written by Laura Clawson / Daily Kos October 25, 2019

Republicans are always looking for ways to find people likely to vote for Democrats and keep them from voting, and that’s putting a big voter-suppression target on college campuses, where one poll has found45% of students to be Democrats and just 24% Republicans.This is where Republican creativity truly flowers—not in the arts or music, but in finding ways to keep students from voting.

Voter ID laws are always fruitful, with state after state passing laws making it anywhere from confusing to completely impossible to use a college ID to vote. That’s the case in Wisconsin and North Carolina and Texas and Tennessee. In New Hampshire, legislators jumped over that and required out-of-state college students to get New Hampshire drivers licenses and auto registrations, effectively a poll tax. This stuff can make a big difference, reports The New York Times: “Nationwide, student turnout in the 2016 presidential election exceeded that of the 2012 presidential vote — but according to the Tufts institute, it fell sharply in Wisconsin, where the state’s voter ID law first applied to students that year.” Donald Trump prevailed in Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes, and there are more than 170,000 students in just the University of Wisconsin system

In Texas, in case a punitive voter ID law wasn’t enough,Republicans passed a law against polling places that are only open for part of the state’s 12-day early-voting period. That affects a significant number of college campus polling places. Florida Republicans, too, took aim at early-voting places on college campuses, and when their first effort was struck down by the courts, they found a backdoor way to revive it.

Students can also run into trouble knowing at what address to register to vote, with some campuses spread across multiple precincts and elections officials not always sympathetic to helping them figure it out.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Tom Steyer was investing the tens of millions of dollars he’s currently spending on ads for his own presidential campaign in helping make sure students are able to vote?

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ref

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/civil-rights-group-challenges-rejection-of-george-mason-student-voter-registrations/2019/10/24/10e27f60-f66e-11e9-8cf0-4cc99f74d127_story.html

Politics

Civil rights group challenges rejection of George Mason student voter registrations

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you'd hope/think these geezers on last legs, but Gen Z! mercer koch $

https://www.wired.com/story/google-and-facebook-backed-an-event-denying-climate-change/

google, Facebook, and Microsoft have publicly acknowledged the dangers of global warming, but last week they all sponsored a conference that promoted climate change denial to young libertarians.

All three tech companies were sponsors of LibertyCon, the annual convention of the libertarian group Students for Liberty, which took place in Washington, DC. Google was a platinum sponsor, ponying up $25,000, and Facebook and Microsoft each contributed $10,000 as gold sponsors. The donations put the tech companies in the top tier of the event’s backers. But the donations also put the firms in company with some of the event’s other sponsors, which included three groups known for their work attacking climate change science and trying to undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

The WIRED Guide to Climate Change

Among the most notable was the CO2 Coalition,a group founded in 2015 to spread the “good news” about a greenhouse gas whose increase in the atmosphere is linked to potentially catastrophic climate change. The coalition is funded by conservative foundations that have backed other climate change denial efforts. These include the Mercer Family Foundation, which in recent years has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to right-wing think tanks engaged in climate change denialism, and the Charles Koch Institute, the charitable arm of one of the brothers behind Koch Industries, the oil and gas behemoth.

In the LibertyCon exhibit hall, the CO2 Coalition handed out brochures that said its goal is to “explain how our lives and our planet Earth will be improved by additional atmospheric carbon dioxide.” One brochure claimed that “more carbon dioxide will help everyone, including future generations of our families” and that the “recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect on plant life,” apparently because the greenhouse gas will make plants grow faster.

In a Saturday presentation, Caleb Rossiter, a retired statistics professor and a member of the coalition, gave a presentation titled “Let’s Talk About Not Talking: Should There Be ‘No Debate’ that Industrial Carbon Dioxide is Causing Climate Catastrophe?” In his presentation, Rossiter told the assembled students that the impact of climate change on weather patterns has been vastly exaggerated. “There has been no increase in storms, in intensity or frequency,” he said. “The data don’t show a worrisome trend.”

He insisted that when he hears the news that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, “I’m cheering!” That’s because, he said, carbon dioxide “is a fertilizer” that has made Africa greener and increased food production there, reducing human misery.

Rossiter also claimed that carbon dioxide emissions correlate with wealth and that the greenhouse gas “improves life expectancy” because poor countries that start burning fossil fuels have a more consistent power supply and can then clean up their water. “I’m happy when carbon dioxide is up, because it means poverty is down,” he declared.

“I come not to bury your carbon but to praise it,” he concluded.

Rossiter’s presentation puts him on the far fringes of the climate denial world. Not even Exxon is trying to make such arguments anymore. And it’s a long way from what Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have said about the dangers of carbon dioxide; all three companies have committed to reducing their own carbon footprints. Microsoft has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030. Google claims to be committed to a “zero carbon” future and is aggressively pursuing renewable energy sources for its operations to reduce its carbon footprint and help combat climate change. And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg criticized President Donald Trump after he announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, writing, “Stopping climate change is something we can only do as a global community, and we have to act together before it’s too late.”

The presence of the tech sponsors at a libertarian conference is not itself unusual, as governments around the globe move to try to regulate social media and online privacy. Tech companies see libertarians as natural allies in the fight against regulation. Indeed, Google sponsored two different sessions at the conference, one on why “permissionless innovation” needs to be defended and another on whether the government will “continue to let the Internet be awesome.” But the companies’ underwriting of a conference with a climate denier on the schedule shows the hazards of trying to advance a policy agenda through interest groups without also supporting their fringe elements.

The CO2 Coalition wasn’t the only group sponsoring LibertyCon that is known for its work undermining efforts to combat climate change. Along with Facebook and Microsoft, the Heartland Institute was also a gold sponsor of the event. Heartland is a longtime player in industry-funded efforts to undermine climate science and fend off efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The conservative Heritage Foundation, which pushed the Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris climate accords and has long featured experts who argue that global warming is a myth, was also a sponsor.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment. A Facebook spokesman responded to questions about its sponsorship of LibertyCon by sending a link to its political engagement page, which says, “Sometimes we support events that highlight Internet and social media issues” and features a long list of third-party groups it has worked with in the past. He noted that LibertyCon met its criteria for support and cited the number of sessions unrelated to climate change.

A spokesperson from Google defended the company’s LibertyCon sponsorship, saying, “Every year, we sponsor organizations from across the political spectrum to promote strong technology laws.As we make clear in our public policy transparency report, Google’s sponsorship or collaboration with a third party organization doesn’t mean that we endorse the organization’s entire agenda or agree with other speakers or sponsors."

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-rights-attack-of-greta-thunberg-is-a-tired-exercise-but-serves-its-purpose/

Right-wing media personalities and outlets have aggressively attacked 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg with a worn-out playbook.Dilapidated and decrepit, its pages offer an old formula for bludgeoning young activists who gain popular support by cutting through the rhetoric of right-wing mouthpieces.

A cascading wave of smears against Thunberg erupted after Thunberg’s speech at the United Nations yesterday, where she upbraided the leaders of the world for failing to act to stem the climate crisis. In her scathing remarks at the United Nations Climate Summit, Thunberg admonished world leaders for failing to take meaningful action on the issue of climate change, despite the science being “crystal clear” for decades.

“How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you are doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight?” Thunberg asked world leaders. She added, “You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you.”

Thunberg has polling to back her up; in the U.S., a majority of teenagers and young adults believe that the earth’s climate is changing in ways that will harm them, according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey taken earlier this year. Reports about the latest climate report from the United Nations seem to confirm those fears and warn that tipping points in the earth’s climate have already been passed and that many severe consequences of climate change are no longer avoidable.

Many around the world have looked to Thunberg as a star communicator on the issue of climate change, which has also branded her as a target of right-wing activists and media. The ire directed at the European teenager often contains little refutation of her message, and instead follows an established strategy for smearing young activists working for progressive causes.

The acts in the play are exhausted. The scenes are as unoriginal as they are disingenuous. Yet, for right-wing leaders, they are nonetheless successful in discrediting youth activists within insular bubbles of reactionary communities online and among aging conservatives.

This ramshackle cottage industry exists at the core of right-wing media, earning buy-in from mainstream conservative thought leaders who seek to discredit progressive activists and movements that gain the support of the American public. As Christian Christensen, professor of journalism at Stockholm University, wrote at Common Dreams:

These attacks have become an industry supposedly rooted in a worldview that worships rights and individual freedoms, but, in actual fact, is rooted in a hatred of activism, principle and dedication. These three elements stand in stark contrast to the values and tactics of those who wish to smear Thunberg and her contemporaries: namely lies, obfuscation and denigration. What scares those who attack Thunberg and the Parkland survivors is not so much the message, but the poise, presence and visibility of young citizens unfazed by their older, jaded, cynical opponents. They are dangerous because they exist and persist.

Depending on which media personality a right-wing consumer listens to, Thunberg is an exploited child or, perhaps, Adolf Hitler himself. For those who paid attention to the smears aimed at Parkland school shooting survivors, the smears sound nearly identical.

One approach popular in establishment conservative media is feigned concern for the young people who enter the political arena coupled with a scolding for those who enabled that entry. In 2018,Todd Starnes wrote for Fox News that Parkland shooting survivors advocating for changes to gun control laws were “propaganda pawns to peddle a fake news narrative”and wrote that it was “shameful that reporters would take advantage of traumatized young people.” Fox News host Tucker Carlson delivered the same kind of performative concern during his primetime program last night; Carlson said that powerful people—presumably those seeking action on the climate crisis—are using Thunberg as a “human shield” against criticism.

The same sentiment was expressed by National Review’s Rich Lowry who put it in plain language: “She is a pawn being used by adults for their own interests.” Disgraced columnist Denise McAllister claimed that “lack of maturity is a greater threat to our world than mythical apocalyptic man-made climate change.” Glenn Beck called Thunberg’s parents “monsters.”

There’s a certain irony to such concern-trolling, considering that the right invests millions of dollars in the creation and upkeep of youth-targeted organizations like Turning Point USA, that Fox News hosts interview children who say they support President Trump, or that the religious right buses in thousands of young people—including high-schoolers and middle-schoolers—to Washington, D.C., every year to fill space at the annual March for Life.

The right has also attempted to rope Thunberg into its longstanding smear campaign against billionaire philanthropist George Soros; the Associated Press debunked a photo circulated on social media that was altered to depict Thunberg standing with Soros his arm draped around her shoulder. At The Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft cited only a pro-QAnon social media account to allege that Thunberg was being escorted around events by a Soros-sponsored political operative.

Breitbart’s John Nolte said that Thunberg “needs a spanking or a psychological intervention” and called her fans “Gretards.” Nolte has made similar jabs at other youth activists; in 2018, Nolte compared Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg to the cult leader from Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn” and deemed him a “mean-spirited little zealot in over his head.” And just last night, Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham, drawing from the same well, likened Thunberg to the children in the King story, members of a murderous cult who kill all the adults in the town.

The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles attacked Thunberg on Fox News last night, calling her a “mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her parents and by the international left.” (Thunberg describes herself as being on the autism spectrum, calling it her “superpower.”) Fox News apologized for Knowles’ comments and told The Hollywood Reporter that it had no plans to invite Knowles back on its network.

Logan Cook, a meme-maker fancied by the Trump administration who attended the “social media summit” hosted at the White House in July, shared an edited a video of Thunberg’s United Nations speech with an audio track of a speech given by Hitler. Cook’s video is almost identical to similarly styled smears broadcast on Infowars in 2018 that depicted Parkland youth activists as Hitler Youth. Right-wing media outlets, including Breitbart and The Daily Wire, latched on to the same smear of Hogg in 2018, fixating on a portion of Hogg’s speech at the 2018 March for Our Lives rally in which Hogg raised his fist in the air. On Sunday, convicted felon and right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza compared Thunberg’s speech to Nazi Youth propaganda. Dale Hurd at CBN News belittled Thunberg as a “prophetess of doom.”

Justifications for the right’s barrel-scraping often attempt to divert attention from its own dirty job. One retort to those angered by the right’s attacks on Thunberg has been to draw a parallel to the way media and left-of-center people treated the teenagers captured on video displaying bigoted behavior toward an Omaha tribe elder who was playing a drum and singing—an episode in January triggered an all-out propaganda war by the right-wing commentators. But the right’s “whataboutism” argument, in this case, works only in a vacuum, as Amanda Marcotte noted.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/why-millennials-and-gen-z-love-the-1990s-sitcom-friends/

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Why millennials and Gen Z love the 1990s sitcom ‘Friends’

Written by Melanie McFarland / Salon September 21, 2019

Perhaps you’ve heard, but millennials and Gen Z don’t like labels. They don’t like being assigned identities, placed in boxes or having anything overtly sold to them. What sublime irony it is — don’t you think? — to know that each of these cohorts made “Friends” one of the most effective sales platforms on TV, into the streaming industry’s hottest commodity.

This doesn’t merely refer to the show’s impact as a hairstyle influencer, its subliminal doubling as a Pottery Barn showcase or its usefulness as an earlier personality-type guide long before BuzzFeed got into that business. (Most people were fine with being a Chandler or a Monica. Nobody wanted to be a Ross.)

“Friends” plays potent role in selling the concept of adulthood to generations maturing at a point of extreme cultural shifts owing to transformations in technology, the economy and culture. The oldest millennials were in their early teens when “Friends” debuted in 1994; when it ended in 2004, some of its youngest fans hadn’t been born yet.

Within the decade of its existence mobile phone technology evolved at a rapid pace, with its main fanbase growing at the same time. Cell phone ownership shifted from a luxury to a necessity to a replacement for landlines, and we probably don’t need to run through every step of what’s happened since.

So let’s cut to the present, when people are more likely to communicate via text than call each other on the phone, more likely to stare into a small screen to consume a show than share the experience with others on a TV, and more likely to search for answers from strangers on the Internet than source knowledge from peers or relatives.

In this world, where people are more likely to seek out romance or make new friendships with the assistance of an online service, “Friends” makes more sense than reality.

Save for Rachel and brother-sister duo Ross and Monica (who all grew up together) and Chandler (originally a friend of Ross) these are folks who probably would not have befriended one another organically in 2019, or even 2009.

They don’t work at the same places or share the same general affinities, save for the one they hold for each other. And while it’s true that Joey met Chandler by way of a roommate-seeking ad (as did Phoebe with Monica, apparently?) these situations generally do not result in a six-person roommate coffee house klatch.

“Friends” is a window into an anachronistic existence where people have the time and inclination to hang out and chat at a coffee shop. What’s more, even the extras are doing some version of that. Does Central Perk have wifi? What’s wifi, anyway?

“Friends” displays a reality where characters contend with romances gone bad with varying degrees of success or failure (“We were on a break!” or “I’m going to Yemen!”), where personality quirks cause friction, where the phrases “rent control” and “illegal sublet” explain why young people just starting out in their careers can afford very nice apartments in Manhattan (as reproduced on the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles).

They all had jobs, although for the longest time one could never be sure what exactly Chandler did. They contended with births and deaths and neighbors who walk around naked in their apartments while leaving the blinds open. And while nothing deeply horrifying happened to any Friend beyond mortification, a couple of them do get mugged along the way. It is New York City in the ‘90s, after all.

Basically, then, to a person growing up in a post-9/11 world where withdrawing from interpersonal contract with loved ones and strangers alike is all too easy, “Friends” promotes a version of independent life in the best light possible. From The Rembrandt’s comforting theme song assuring us that our friends will always be there for us, to the bouncy end credits, it gently guides the young and confused past the many checkpoints of striking out solo for the first time. It’s Waze, only for #adulting.

“Friends” wasn’t born to play this role, of course; as the story goes, when series creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane pitched the series, it was intended to be a decidedly Generation X show about a bunch of 20-somethings that hang out in a local coffee shop.

And actually, this aspect of the Gen X experience has some truth to it, thanks to the popularity of “Reality Bites” and “Singles” and “Slackers,” films that captured a generalized ideal of a cohort that was never truly that cohesive or easy to peg.

“Friends,” in comparison, is a cleaner, brighter, fantasized version of one’s twenties, with enough of a truth shot to make the first foray into independence appealing. “Girls” performed a version of this, but one that served bitter in heaping portions beside sweet, by way of a heroine who is ridiculously selfish.

“How I Met Your Mother” replicated some of the “Friends” magic, but its formula grated after a time and the plots didn’t convey any lessons beyond that of Neil Patrick Harris’ appeal. (And it’s interesting to consider that “HIMYM” did almost exactly what “Friends” did with Ross and Rachel, introducing Ted to Robin in the pilot and having them end up together in the finale … the difference being that the later show was then crucified for that move.)

The “Friends” pilot firmly and expediently establishes the series’ and the young adult’s raison d’être in under 30 minutes: We meet Ross and Rachel as their respective marriage and impending marriage are separately and concurrently breaking up, and Monica as she discovers the nice guy she’s starting to date is a liar. Chandler, Joey and Phoebe bear witness to this, revealing their very different personalities and origin stories in the process.

But to me, what may be the most important moment in the pilot occurs when the group sits Rachel down and makes her cut up the credit cards keeping her reliant on her father’s money. Each friend assures Rachel that she has to figure out her life for herself if she wants to have any sense of agency and control over her destiny, just as each admits that it’s not always going to be simple. The real world, Monica tells Rachel, sucks. She quickly follows with, “You’re gonna love it.”

“Friends” stories have been flooding our news feeds for weeks now as publications mark the 25th anniversary of the series debut with character examinations, biographical glimpses into the writers’ rooms and nostalgic commentary about the show’s enduring appeal.

Behind all that celebration of its resilience, though, is a marketplace valuation of its dual worth as a pacifying how-to guide. The precise anniversary date — September 22 — coincides with the broadcast of the 71st annual Primetime Emmy Awards.

That will be airing on Fox, and fortunately for Netflix, the Emmys telecasts haven’t been ratings threats for many years now. Why would Netflix care? Because “Friends” remains one of the most popular series on its service, so much that the company famously spent $100 million to continue licensing the program from WarnerMedia until the end of this year, with Warner reclaiming the series to air it on its own streaming service HBO Max starting in 2020. That eviction date will be here sooner than you think.

And Netflix, along with other services, are scrambling to land streaming rights to series that may have similar abiding appeal to “Friends” and “The Office,” which is slightly more popular and due to remain with Netflix through 2021.

This week the streamer announced it has grabbed “Seinfeld” out from under Hulu, paying around $500 million to do so. “Seinfeld” begin airing on Netflix in 2021, although Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer have none of the heartwarming appeal or sexiness of Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey.

But if you think that hurts, consider that HBO Max also locked down “The Big Bang Theory” through 2028, reportedly in a deal estimated to be worth billions. In comparison HBO Max forked over a reported $425 million to keep “Friends” on the platform for five years. NBC Universal, which is reclaiming “The Office” from Netflix, paid more than $500 million for those exclusive global streaming rights.

The bottom line for consumers of any TV viewing generation: What platform you choose to watch the shows that speak to you may say more about who you are than the content itself.

“The Big Bang Theory” is very much a descendant of “Friends,” arguably the most successful among the many series that attempted to replicate its formula. And the similarities are numerous, with much of the action taking place around large comfortable couches and friends supporting one another through romantic adventures, break-ups, weddings, death, career ups and downs, and the joy and friction of cohabitation.

That show turns 20 in 2027, more than enough time to hook into later Gen Zers and speak to what they understand about the world in ways we can’t even fathom. Whether we’ll start to label each other as “Friends” people or “Big Bang” folks as a means of understanding who we are, who can say. But each does a pretty good job of pitching the joy and pain of the real world to people raised by screens and trying, somehow, to understand what nobody is telling them about how life is going to be.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/right-wing-media-outlets-are-booming-in-the-trump-era-report/

no lnx

Right-wing media outlets are booming in the Trump era: report

Written by Alex Henderson August 26, 2019

Right-wing media outlets have traditionally experienced their biggest growth when a Democrat was in the White House. Many far-right outlets knew how to turn fear-mongering over President Bill Clinton in the 1990s or President Barack Obama in the late 2000s/early 2010s into major advertising revenue. But in a report for Axios, Sara Fischer explains that some right-wing outlets have been enjoying substantial growth under a Republican president: Donald Trump.

Citing a Columbia Journalism Review analysis of right-wing websites using Comscore data, Fischer reports that RedState, the Washington Times and the Washington Examiner are among the outlets that have been thriving during the Trump era. Those sites, Fischer notes, “are experiencing major growth by widening their coverage. Their goal is to cover whatever is capturing the world’s attention that day, from human interest stories to trending entertainmentdevelopments.”

Fischer notes that although the right-wing Weekly Standard folded in late 2018, other websites on the right continue to “rank high” in terms of “engagement on Facebook” — and Fox News, according to Fischer, remains “the #1 news site on Facebook” in 2019 “in terms of reader engagement,” according to the analytics company Newswhip.

Podcasts that have been thriving in the Trump era, Fischer reports, include “The Joe Rogan Experience” and “The Ben Shapiro Show.” Shapiro, she points out, has “built a megabrand aimed at targeting younger conservatives.”

Fischer stresses, however, that although “conservative media remains strong across most major media platforms,” some “left-leaning outlets” — including HuffPost— “rank highly” in the Trump era. But Trump’s presidency and the 2020 election, she writes, continue to benefit right-wing media.

“Typically, the opposition party has a media explosion in response to whichever political group is in power,” Fischer reports. “But the economic stress of the media industry, combined with the Trump-driven conservative strategy of broad messaging, has upended that dynamic.”

2x?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/why-liberals-need-to-grapple-with-the-complexity-of-the-new-left/

no lnx

Why liberals need to grapple with the complexity of the new left

Written by The Washington Monthly July 27, 2019

Avant-garde social movements are jarring among the non-adherent. It’s part of their point—and familiar at the moment. By 2019, a set of radical political theories on the left has spread from college campuses into professional media and mainstream culture, variously emphasizing demands for safe spaces free of posttraumatic triggers, limits on free speech to offset structural privilege, new pronouns to help de-normalize cisgender identity, and other unconventional imperatives. You’ve probably seen scare quotes around “safe spaces,” “structural privilege,” or “cisgender identity” as often as not.

[Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump

by Robby Soave

All Points Books, 336 pp.]

A more familiar but still disruptive politics ofanti-capitalism has meanwhile been on the rise across the left under the old banner of socialism, while a politics of white nationalism, resurgent on the right, has echoed the tropes of fascism.All together, these movements haven’t just bewildered the uninitiated majority of the country; they’ve seemed to hasten a steep erosion of consensus around the terms of political debate in America and a metastatic spread of conflict without common ground.

For anyone committed to the foundational mores of liberal democracy, such as toleration, free expression, and due process, the encroachment of illiberal consensus from all sides represents a special problem. Liberal-democratic politics may be compatible with any number of radical ideas over time, but it also depends on the maintenance of a common social repertoire that includes a broad investment in mutual persuasion, a commitment to evidentiary argument, and an openness to creating diverse coalitions for distinct political ends. The more radical politics thrives by working against this social repertoire, rather than with it, the more it stands to threaten liberal-democratic politics as such.

In his new book Panic Attack, Robby Soave takes a comprehensive and critical look at the flourishing ecosystem of American radicalism with this problem in view. That means surveying a lot of ground: the hugely influential worldview informed by intersectional theory, which focuses on the complex interactions among racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression; the related politics of identity, culture, and power behind Black Lives Matter, fourth-wave feminism, and trans activism; the new salience of the Democratic Socialists of America; and the alarming phenomenon of the hateful, cruel, and ironical alt-right.

It also means going to some historical depth. While Soave’s subtitle is Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, he understands that, like so much about this age, the state of its radicalism has vastly more to do with decades of emerging conditions that preceded Donald Trump’s presidency than it does with Trump himself. In a sense, Panic Attack works as an anthology of historical explainers. Perhaps you’re uncertain about the origins and significance of ideas like “cultural appropriation” or “gender dysphoria,” the importance of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, or the influence of Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory on undergraduate instruction in the humanities and social sciences? Soave lays these out clearly, without condescension to either his subject matter or the reader.

He integrates them, as well, in an overarching historical narrative. Despite their eclecticism and sporadic mutual enmity, Soave argues, the array of radical movements asserting themselves since Trump’s election share a core set of themes, apart from which we fundamentally can’t understand them. More specifically, they’re driven by a core set of experiences that have unmoored “Zillennials”—a mash-up term of art combining Soave’s own Millennial generation (born 1981–96) with the younger Gen Z (1997–)—from some of the basic assumptions of their

forebears.

As Soave sees it, Zillennials have been raised in a chronically freaked-out “safety culture,” at home and at school, that has left them broadly unprepared for some of modern life’s tougher realities. They have then been loaded with unprecedented student debt and dropped into an extraordinarily rocky economy. With the intensifying influence of social media, and the powerful new modes of social normalization they’ve catalyzed, Zillennials have been primed for immersion into a networked set of radical ideas that have seemed to speak meaningfully to their lives. Coming largely out of the academy, these ideas have emphasized a capacious view of victimhood and an associated need for protection from psychological harm; an antipathy to capitalism; and a hard turn away from the traditionally youth-friendly norms of free expression that characterized the civil rights and antiwar eras.

The result has been a proliferation of new forms of common sense that are contemptuous not only toward liberals’ traditional embrace of markets in the economic realm, but also toward the traditional defenses of free expression, open debate, and due process that liberals have often shared with radicals on the left in the social, political, and legal realms.

Like many concerned about “political correctness,” Soave locates these tendencies first and foremost on college campuses, the sources of some of the more familiar and dramatic illustrations. These include the deliberate disruption and harassment of campus speakers—occasionally quasi-fascists, sometimes mainstream conservatives, but just as often heterodox liberals or even left radicals—on account of the putative harm their ideas do to one or more categories of oppressed people. Other illustrations include the establishment of new campus regulatory powers to enforce radical norms and various successes in reshaping curricula to conform with them. But Soave also sees these new norms beyond academia, in patterns of fierce division, exclusion, and censure that inflect different race-, sex-, and gender-based identity movements across society at large.

Notably, when Soave reports conversations with left-radical protestors, they tend to convey little interest in liberal theories of the case at all. “Free speech is allowing people to express themselves in a way that doesn’t put other people down,” one tells him at an anti-alt-right counterdemonstration last year. “It doesn’t oppress people and damage our society.” Elsewhere, an antifascist activist is incredulous about any need to justify physically attacking a peaceful group of right-wing demonstrators: “They’re fucking Nazis.” Elsewhere still, in arguing to cancel the screening of a pro-gay film about Stonewall that a group of student activists deemed in an open letter “discursively violent” toward members of the trans community, an undergrad student dismisses the idea of showing the film and then debating about it. “Critical discussion,” she says, “is simply a way of engaging in respectability politics.” Overall, the lack of engagement with liberal ideas is at least as striking as the substance of any radical ideas themselves.

The role of this negative space seems key to interpreting the story Soave is telling in Panic Attack. It’s not uncommon in skeptical accounts of “political correctness” to encounter the idea that radical politics goes too far in an illiberal direction. But Soave’s account is different. The physics of contemporary radicalism that he describes isn’t really linear, in the sense that “too far” would imply, so much as circular: as liberal-democratic mores become increasingly meaningless among radicals, they themselves increasingly see only left versus right, socialist versus fascist, radicalism versus radicalism. The only lucid way to respond to the world and win the future is, now, to understand that liberals are objectively allied with your most extreme political enemies; and the more forceful you imagine those enemies to be, the more force you’ll consider necessary and justified to counter them.

This dynamic may account for what some will no doubt consider a glaring disproportionality in Soave’s book: he devotes one chapter, less than twenty-two pages out of 280, to the alt-right. This appears to be because he considers the movement’s reach tightly limited. “The alt-right doesn’t have a comparable base of power,” he writes, in reference to the radical left’s dominance on college campuses, “but its members have played an important role in infesting social media sites and making them miserably toxic places.” The alt-right has been violent, even lethally; it’s everywhere hateful and ugly; but, for Soave, its only true political achievement is to have dressed itself up as something the left would maximally fear and react to, while feeding cues to a nihilistic and insecure president who, of course, reads the world extensively through social media.

The alt-right, Soave believes, has failed to grow for the same reason it’s succeeded at all: despite all the anger and disaffection it can speak to, it has no argument for destroying the legacy of liberal democracy in the United States that’s in any way compelling to most Americans. It just feeds off the twisted psychology governing a very online, disaffected fringe population of white men who consider themselves victims. “Alt-right activists often chant ‘You will not replace us!’ at their marches,” Soave writes. “They are specifically radicalized by the idea that multiculturalism is about erasing white identity.” That is, as timeworn as its KKK-style white-supremacy tropes are, the alt-right makes no sense as a contemporary movement, even to its members themselves, apart from the core narrative that a “politically correct” left is oppressing them. The alt-right is, for Soave, only marginally significant apart from its codependent relationship with the radical left.

Left-radical protestors tend to convey little interest in liberal theories of the case at all. “Free speech is allowing people to express themselves in a way that doesn’t put other people down,” one says.

This is an account in which cause and effect can play ambiguously. That won’t please everyone. But it does help give Panic Attack an unusually subtle aspect. Soave is interested, above all, in the underlying political psychology of our fragmented moment. Self-identified radicals may inevitably feel stereotyped or altogether misunderstood. They may also feel suspicious, particularly knowing that Soave identifies as a libertarian. But the dominant themes of the book aren’t specifically libertarian; they’re generally liberal-democratic, and Soave gets at them in a remarkably open spirit of liberal-democratic dialogue.

There’s an important substance to this style. Critical commentary about threats to free speech and due process can often work itself up about a monstrous formation like “postmodern cultural Marxism” that’s ostensibly beneath everything one could hate about the present-day radical left. It can imagine something like a single rhizome supporting and sustaining all sorts of toxic social tendencies—“politically correct” degradations of plain language, performative anger, and so on—that we might otherwise understand as distinct.

In effect, single-rhizome thinking like this reapplies the fundamental analogy in the concept of radicalism itself, with its etymological origins in the Latin radix, meaning “root.” Radical politics understands itself as going to the roots of society’s problems and addressing them there. Single-rhizome thinking is radical anti-radicalism. It sees no compromise, let alone prospect for transformative mutual understanding, with people immersed in the vocabulary of the radical left; the root has to be dug out and destroyed before it destroys us.

Soave rejects this way of thinking. Which allows him not only to distinguish different theoretical frameworks (for example, “postmodern” theories from Marxism), but also to see value where radically anti-radical analysts might not—as he does in the relentless attention Black Lives Matter has brought to policing and the criminal justice system or in the achievements that trans and queer activists have made in extending the equality and dignity that gay activists won before them. Which in turn allows Soave to be uncommonly specific rather than overly general in his criticisms. It’s a rare virtue.

Occasionally, Soave struggles to balance the intricacies this virtue can demand with the scope of the book. At times he just moves too briskly, as, for example, in his summary of G. W. F. Hegel’s significance for modern politics, which he interprets in one paragraph by reference to a single blog post. At others, he invokes idiosyncratically libertarian reasoning about a complicated and contestable issue. This tendency may be most pronounced in a chapter assessing a miscellaneous range of contemporary political movements without consistently establishing their connection to his central argument. For instance, his discussion of post-Parkland youth activism on gun control offers no reason to see it as a form of radicalism, apart from conjectural links to “safety culture.” The effect is one Soave might have preferred to avoid in an argument otherwise characterized by recurring efforts to establish good faith.

Toward the end of the book, Soave shifts from sympathetic critic to frustrated potential ally. In his chapter on the alt-right, for example, he argues that the contemporary left is engaged in a devastating array of strategic and tactical blunders, alienating armies of potential allies and ensuring the impossibility of the sort of coalitional alliances that could effectively counter Trumpian politics. “Political power, at least for now, is firmly in the right’s grasp,” he writes. “And it’s probably more likely to stay that way as long as the right’s foes—the left, but also liberals, centrists, and libertarians—remain hopelessly divided.”

The idea that we could overcome the far right’s political dominance through strategic and tactical compromises among its opponents is, in its way, hopeful. But it may also wish away the problem: Soave’s left radicals aren’t, as they see it—or even as he presents them on the whole—really here to defeat Trump; they’re here to do what they can to ensure that what follows Trump is a radical future. And as Soave notes throughout the book, this is a future liberated quite precisely from the politics of compromise, the “moderation” and the “centrism,” that radicals on the left believe have allowed radicals on the right to gain so much ground in America over the decades—and have enabled systematic forms of oppression for longer still.

In the end, the challenge for coalition building between liberal-democratic stalwarts and left radicals isn’t really strategic or tactical; it’s political. They don’t obviously want the same things, and so they can’t obviously think about coming together to undo Trump or the Republican Party in the same way. Neither should liberals, or anyone else intent on defeating the Trumpian right, accept without argument that a coalition with left radicals makes sense as a strategic priority at all—compared with, say, helping the Democratic Party win at the state level, undo GOP-engineered gerrymandering, or just run better national campaigns. As Soave himself reminds us throughout Panic Attack, the politically disaffected population in America super-outsizes the actually radicalized population. But then, if liberals ever needed a demonstration of how crucial it is for them to see beyond electoral strategy, renew their ability to speak compellingly to a world rife with injustices, and intellectually seed a liberal-democratic future that no one can take for granted, the Age of Trump is it.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/07/class-0000-campaign-denounces-cowardly-censorship-student-call-climate-action

More than 350 students across the U.S. have signed up to use their graduation speeches as a call to action directed at lawmakers and older generations, demanding their elders do everything in their power to solve the climate crisis and protect the planet—but many students are facing censorship as they try to get their message out.

Students who joined the Class of 0000 movementplanned to give one unified commencement speech at high schools and colleges across the country, demanding that all 2020 political candidates must "have a plan to get to zero emissions, or get zero of our votes."

:{:{"A lot of adults blame our generation for being sensitive but we have to deal with the problems they have caused. It's really frustrating. We are vocal about climate change because no one else is going to do anything about it." }:

—Jessica Lopez, high school graduation speaker"Together, we have the power to solve the climate crisis," reads the speech. "Every student. Every parent. Every teacher. Every leader. The future is in our hands."}:

But administrators at a number of schools have claimed the message is "too controversial," asking graduation speakers not to bring up the climate in their speeches.

One organizer for Class of 0000 denounced the censorship as "cowardly."

"It's really frustrating that these graduating students are not being able to give one last remark for the school that they contributed so much to," Lia Harel, an organizer on Class of 0000's national planning team, told Common Dreams.

Students in Massachusetts, California, Arizona, and elsewhere have been told they cannot give the Class of 0000 speech—angering students who say their schools have previously been open to protests like the National Student Walkout for gun control reform last year.

"It's shocking to me that we could voice our opinions then, but are silenced when we want to talk about climate change," Jessica Lopez, a senior at Health Sciences High and Middle Collegetold The Guardian. "A lot of adults blame our generation for being sensitive but we have to deal with the problems they have caused. It's really frustrating. We are vocal about climate change because no one else is going to do anything about it."

"On this issue, it feels like the adults are the children," Lopez added.

Scientist and organizer Lucky Tran called The Guardian's report "horrific," tweeting that young people should be commended for addressing the climate crisis—an issue that is expected affect people in every corner of the world during today's graduates' lifetime.

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CalSTRS, the largest public teachers’ pension fund in the country, currently invests over $6 billionin the fossil fuel industry—an investment that is both immoral and financially under-performing. Divesting this fund from fossil fuels will improve teachers’ retirement income, and send a huge message to global financial markets that fossil fuel investments are no longer acceptable. Reinvesting those funds in the clean energy economy will give our kids’ futures a fighting chance.

So this year #YourTeacherHasHomework. We want teachers to tell CalSTRS to divest from fossil fuels; and we want teachers to tell their union chapter to pass a resolution for CalSTRS to divest.

What You Can Do to Help

Contact your teachers’ union and ask it to endorse a resolution to divest CalSTRS.
Add your voice to the thousands who have already urged CalSTRS to divest: Sign our petition
Want to gather petition signatures? Download Blank Petition
Want to contact the Board directly? Send a personal message to the CalSTRS Board at board@calstrs.com

https://fossilfreeca.org/campaigns/#CalSTRS

May 8th, Fossil Free California teamed up with students from Youth vs. Apocalypse and Earth Guardians to bring our message straight to CalSTRS—divest from fossil fuels! More than 20 students skipped school that day to tell the CalSTRS Investment Committee to stop investing in the destruction of their future.

CalSTRS was so taken aback that they attempted to censor the youths' testimony by refusing to record it on their video live-stream. That didn't stop the word from getting out, however, as several radio stations covered the event, including KPFA: listen here.

Inspired by this success, the students have promised to return to CalSTRS' meetings in July and September, and FFCA has hired a part-time organizer to make sure that many more students join us at these next meeting

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From Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth Warren to Kirsten Gillibrand to … lots of others, Democratic candidates in 2020 seem to have plans to lower the cost of education and make it possible for more Americans to attend college without drowning under a mountain of debt. Democrats recognize that education is critical to obtaining a good job, and that the cost of education in 2019 means that students are often saddled with loans that can not only erase the benefits of that education for years, but take those new college graduates out of the market for homes, or restrict their ability to move. In short, high costs for college not only means misery for graduates, it harms American companies at every level by depriving them both of workers and consumers.

So, naturally, Donald Trump is making it worse.

While Trump’s tax break for billionaires is just that—a plan that awards Trump himself tens of millions in tax breaks and means that some of the largest, most profitable companies in the country pay no tax at all—it punishes working class and middle class students. As The New York Times reports, students attending college on scholarships or financial aid packages are being taxed at a rate higher than Trump pays on his eight-figure income, with rates going up to 37%. That means that some of the students who most needed the money the most, but who made it into college on academic or athletic scholarships, or those who assembled an aid package that let them barely climb over the cost hurdle … are finding their mailboxes full with bills from the IRS. And, unlike Trump, they can’t get away with ignoring tax law.

Somehow, when they were crowing about this tax plan, Republicans failed to brag about how it was going to sock low income and middle class students for tens of thousands so that billionaires and corporate CEO’s could take home maximum benefits. It it seems like skimming from students wouldn’t make much of a difference, this isn’t just a slap on a few. This Trump tax hits about 1.3 million undergraduates and 15,000 grad students. And that’s not all. This “mistake” by Trump and the Republicans in designing their tax plan, is also taxing tribal funds paid to Native Americankids to help them get an education … or simply to live. That’s quite a mistake.

But was it a mistake? The reason all these students are being hit is because the Republican law didn’t just include the special “kiddie tax” rate that was originally established to punish wealthy parents who tried to avoid taxes by hiding money under the names of small children, it expandedthat tax. The new law increased the age limit from 14 to 23 and removed language that limited the application of the tax. That makes punishing low income and middle class students seem a lot less like an accident, and more like a plan.

Democratic Representative Elaine Luria is leading an effort to roll back the expanded “kiddie tax.” Republicans may claim that the fact that low income students are finding financial aid packages taxed at the same rate as the maximum paid by wealthy toddlers whose parents try to hide a few million under their blankets is a mistake—just something they overlooked in their headlong rush to express mail trillions to the wealthiest people in the world—but somehow getting them to agree to fix this mistake is “not far along.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/mistake-in-republican-tax-plan-taxes-1-3-million-scholarship-students-more-than-millionaires/

new 519

March For Our Lives, the gun violence prevention movement, called for an end to #GenerationLockdown following the latest school shooting.

Two suspects opened fire at the Denver-area STEM School Highlands Ranch Tuesday. Kendrick Castillo, 18, died. He was just days away from graduation. Eight others were injured.

It was the fourth school shooting in Colorado since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999, the Denver Post reported.

March For Our Lives, which was formed in the wake of the Parkland, Florida mass shooting last year, demanded an end to such violent acts. The group said people must not to “grow numb” to the tragedies and urged political leadership tackle the gun violence epidemic.

The group made the calls in a Twitter thread that included video from local Denver7 News of young STEM students boarding a bus outside the school....

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/11/report-offers-bleak-picture-rising-inequality-and-soaring-costs-drive-young-people

4/19 comm dr

report Offers 'Bleak Picture' as Rising Inequality and Soaring Costs Drive Young People Out of Global Middle Class

It’s accused of (at best) incompetent coverage of the protests which saw children and young people striking in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Fenwick, East Kilbride, Coatbridge, Stirling, Inverkeithing, Peebles, Fort William, Forres, St Andrews, Inverness, Ullapool, South Uist, Aberdeen, Aberdour, Kirkwall and Eigg yesterday.

It’s now reported that over 1.4 million people were on #SchoolStrike4Climate yesterday, in 2083 places in 125 countries on all continents. 350 called it the: “Biggest day of global climate action ever”.

https://www.ecowatch.com/greta-thunberg-nobel-peace-prize-2631637803.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/greta-thunberg-eu-pledge-climate-2629705430.html

16 yo woman

Hundreds of Kentucky high school students and climate campaigners with the youth-led Sunrise Movement descended on the Capitol Hill office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday to deliver 100,000 petition signatures and stage a sit-in to make clear to lawmakers that young people want a Green New Deal for their communities and futures.

For calling on McConnell to heed public demands for federal lawmakers to pass policies that will phase out fossil fuels and combat the global climate crisis while also creating green jobs and a more just economy, more than 40 demonstrators were arrested:

BREAKING: arrests happening now outside #OilMoneyMitch‘s DC office pic.twitter.com/S4AyB73aZY

— Sunrise Movement ?? (@sunrisemvmt) February 25, 2019

As recent polling shows more than 80 percent of Americans back key elements of the Green New Deal put forth by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the mobilization to increase pressure on McConnell comes after the majority leader announced last week that he plans to rush a floor vote on the resolution, which critics denounced as a ploy to fuel divisions in the Democratic Party.

“Kentucky youth traveled here today because their state needs a Green New Deal. Mitch McConnell’s Green New Deal vote is a political stunt to score some points for his wealthy donors,” Sunrise Movement executive director Varshini Prakash said in a statement. “We’re here to warn him and all senators: if you refuse to back the Green New Deal, young people will remember next time you ask for our votes.”

Demonstrators who carried signs that read “Oil & gas $$ or our lives?,” “Green New Deal,” and “Mitch, Look us in the eyes” as well as supporters posted updates on social media from Monday’s demonstration with the hashtags #OilMoneyMitch and #LookUsInTheEyes:

Young Kentuckians with @sunrisemvmt were just kicked out of #OilMoneyMitch‘s senate office because he won’t #lookusintheyes as he condemns our generation.

Join the livestream: https://t.co/eTkLp9cibC pic.twitter.com/ZCZgl53ju3

— matthew miles goodrich (@mmilesgoodrich) February 25, 2019

?? Stand with the young folks risking arrest in Washington, DC today to stand up to #OilMoneyMitch & fight for the just climate solutions we need.

If you’re in the US, call your Reps to ask them to co-sponsor the resolutions for a #GreenNewDeal: https://t.co/EhEdyGq9LV pic.twitter.com/Vy5wcIwx4J

— 350 dot org (@350) February 25, 2019

“I am here because people in my community don’t have jobs, are starving and turning to opioids and dying,” 15-year-old Lily Gardner of Lexington, Kentucky, said in a statement. “Mitch McConnell refuses to do anything about it. His own constituents — high schoolers — have traveled here to meet with him. All we want is for him to put our lives above the interests of his campaign donors.”

Both from McConnell’s office and outside the Capitol building, the youth demonstrators shared why they felt compelled to visit their senator in Washington — with some pointing to warnings from a recent U.N. report that the international community has about 12 years to pursue “rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented” systemic changes needed to avert climate catastrophe:

Young Kentuckians w @sunrisemvmtlou….

??? visited #OilMoneyMitch‘s office in KY multiple times last week

?? camped out when he wouldn’t meet with them

??traveled to DC to confront the Senator directly

?? are now getting arrested bc he is too cowardly to #LookUsInTheEyes pic.twitter.com/YX28IwhhXS

— matthew miles goodrich (@mmilesgoodrich) February 25, 2019

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who is among the scores of co-sponsors of the Green New Deal resolution, voiced support for the sit-in at McConnell’s office on Monday, urging the youth climate activists to “keep fighting.”

.@senatemajldr claims that a #GreenNewDeal is unattainable, as if he suddenly cares about climate. Instead of his obstruction, we need these bold and transformation solutions to save our planet and economy. Keep fighting, @sunrisemvmt!

— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) February 25, 2019

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/gen-z-may-hold-the-key-as-thousands-of-high-school-students-globally-convene-to-protest-climate-change-deniers/

...Despite the urgency in Greta’s speech and calls for climate protesters to get more radical, the outcomes of COP24 left much to be desired, in terms of actionable steps to cut emissions. It remains to be seen whether Greta’s call to action will take root and drive meaningful change. But our intuition is that, armed with social media and growing economic clout, Gen Z is best positioned to influence business practices, rather than global climate agreements, where political gridlock appears to be the status quo.

A proud history of activism

A look back at recent social and environmental movements proves that youth activism can shape the current debate around climate change. Approaching the 60th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins – where students flouted segregation by occupying seats at diners – it’s timely to recall the instrumental role young people played throughout the American civil rights movement’s most critical moments. Their actionshelped to desegregate schools, challenge racism and advance voter and civil rights legislation.

Other notable youth movements over the past 50 years have included the Vietnam War protests, Tiananmen Square and the Arab Spring. While each of these movements is unique to its time and place in history, they share a common element: a clear authority to protest against.

Arguably, young climate activists today face an even tougher challenge than their historical predecessors. Getting political action on climate change is a seemingly impossible task, and youth movements over the past 30 years have been unable to influence global policy in any meaningful way. This is largely because no single government or organisation has the necessary authority to create the kind of change needed to address climate change on a global scale.

A powerful appeal

While Greta’s message may have fallen on deaf ears at COP24, her appeal to global business leaders at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, holds more promise. As scholars in social innovation, we are interested in understanding how youth activism can transform the business sector, by aligning sustainable business models with a meaningful purpose and positive impact on the environment.

Companies are already looking for ways to hitch a ride on social and political movements and tap into Gen Z’s purchasing power, reportedly worth US$44 billion globally. And a number of recent campaigns by young activists have already succeeded in making corporations change their ways.

The anti-straw movement, started by nine-year-old Milo Cress in 2011, illustrates how social media can change behaviour at multinational companies such as McDonalds and Starbucks. Likewise, the Facebook page Kids Cut Conflict Palm Oil has – with the help of Australian NGO Wildlife Asia – successfully lobbied PepsiCo to cut ties with an Indonesian palm oil supplier over deforestation and labour concerns.

Recent initiatives to end gun violence in the US have also seen youth activists play a major role. Following the shooting that killed 17 people at a school in Parkland, Florida, students began social media campaigns targeting major companies with ties to the National Rifle Association, forcing them to end those relationships. Dick’s Sporting Goods, a major gun retailer, pulled assault-style rifles from its stores in response.

Companies also want to understand how digital natives use social media to interact with their products and services. From hiring Gen Z advisorsto guide digital marketing efforts, to putting Millennials and Gen Z on their board of directors, companies are racing to connect with young people.

Understanding that Gen Z are motivated by social causes, companies are making efforts to genuinely engage with this demographic on social media. For example, Boxed Water has pledged to plant two trees for every picture of their product shared with #betterplanet, and has planted nearly 800,000 trees to date.

The international community has been warned that there is only a 12 year window to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5C – the limit to prevent “climate catastrophe”. By that time, Greta Thunberg will be just 28 years old – so it’s no wonder that today’s youth are determined to keep up the pressure.

Tackling climate change is going to need buy-in from corporations, governments and civil society. If today’s young activists can speed up this process, all power to them. After all, as the old proverb goes, we don’t inherit the world from our parents – we borrow it from our children.